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Museums

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is one of the finest university art museums in the United States. Strengths of the nearly 16,000-object permanent collection (including the approx. 3,300-object Adkins Collection and the more than 3,500-object James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection) are French Impressionism, 20th century American painting and sculpture, traditional and contemporary Native American art, art of the Southwest, ceramics, photography, contemporary art, Asian art and graphics from the 16th century to the present. Visit the Museum of Art website.

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

Over 300 million years of Oklahoma’s natural history can be seen in the museum’s five galleries that feature dinosaurs and thousands of other artifacts of the archaeological past. Visit the Museum of Natural History Web site.

Collections

The Adkins Collection

The Adkins Collection, valued at approximately $50 million, is a collection of Native American works of art predominately by Taos artists. It includes more than 3300 objects including 1100 two-dimensional works, 370 pieces of pottery, 1600 examples of jewelry and silverwork, and nearly 250 pieces of other Native arts. Read more about The Adkins Collection.

The Bizzell Bible Collection

Founded by William Bennett Bizzell, president of The University of Oklahoma (1925-1941), the collection of 665 Bibles includes Bibles in more than 14 languages and several incunabula (books published in the infancy of printing, before 1500), the oldest of which is a hand-painted manuscript prayer book written on vellum from the fifteenth century. Visit the Bible Collection Web site.

Carl Albert Collection

The papers of the Carl Albert Collection reveal part of the long history of Congress; the collection documents Albert, his congressional colleagues, and the major issues of political campaigns of the late 1940s to mid-1970s such as Vietnam, busing, the economy, the energy crisis and policy, gun control and Watergate. Visit the Carl Albert Collection Web site.

Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art in the American West

The Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West and is home to more than 100 early prints of paintings by Charles M. Russell and contains an ever-growing collection of books, manuscripts, theses and dissertations, periodicals and journals, artist files, and slides on western American art from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Visit the Charles M. Russell Center site.

The Government Documents Collection

The Government Documents collection spans from the early nineteenth century to the most current federally produced documents. With more 2.8 million items, it is a selective depository that receives 90% of all federally disseminated documents and official publications from several international organizations including the United Nations and the European Union. Visit the Government Documents Collection Web site.

The Harry W. Bass Business History Collection

The Harry W. Bass Business History Collection contains books, microforms, videos and journals on a number of topics including the histories of business leaders and firms, and the economic, social and political forces that influence the role of business in society. Visit the Business History Collection Web site.

The History of Science Collection

The History of Science Collection is one of the largest collections of rare scientific books and documents in the United States with items such as Hrabanus Maurus' Opus de Universo (the Collection's oldest book, printed before 20 July 1467) and Galileo's handwritten corrections to one of his first editions.Visit the History of Science Collection Web site.

The John and Mary Nichols Rare Books and Special Collections

The John and Mary Nichols Rare Books and Special Collections are comprised of rare books and special materials in English, European, and American literatures dating from the fifteenth century to the present, including several first-edition works by Charles Dickens.Visit the Rare Books Collection Web site.

The Law Library Collections

The OU College of Law houses several collections including The Native People's Collection, Federal Government Depository Library Program, Native American Legal Resources, Native American Constitution and Law Digitalization Project, Rare Book Collection, and Video Collection. Visit the Law Library collections Web site.

The Orville S. Witt Collection

The Orville S. Witt Collection was established in 1946 as a memorial by the parents of Lt. Orville S. Witt Jr., an architecture student whose plane was shot down during World War II. It is a gathering of books on the subjects of the history of architecture, Bruce Goff, Mendall Glickman and Frank Lloyd Wright. Visit the Orville S. Witt Collection Web site.

Political Communication Center

The Political Communication Center houses the Julian P. Kanter Political Commercial Archive, a repository with the largest and most comprehensive collection of political broadcast advertising in the world. With more than 90,000 commercials, the archive includes political advertisements dating back to 1936 for radio and 1950 for television. The purpose of the archive is to preserve these valuable historical materials and to make them available for scholarly research and professional use. Visit the Political Communication Center Web site.

The Western History Collections

The Western History Collections is most known for its Photographic Archives, which holds more than 250,000 prints and negatives of the American Southwest and West from the period 1870-1940. The Photographic Archives include the work of frontier photographers and focuses on the themes of the growth and development of the American west, the state of Oklahoma and The University of Oklahoma. Visit the Western History Collection Web site.